I Should Not Be Here
I should not be here. I'm a black man, 30 years old. Statistically speaking, many folks in my demographic are either dead or in jail. I should not be here. I grew up on the west side of Chicago with a crack house across the street. My mother was a crack head, my aunt was a crack head and like Barack, I didn't know my father until I was about 12 or 13. My mother abused me until I was about 12. You know, physical beatings, but worse was the mental abuse. She told me she only had me for a welfare check. She told me I would never do shit, be shit, or have shit.
You know sometimes, people. I don't just mean black people. Most people of lower socio economical means put caps on themselves. They limit what they feel is possible.
My grandmother took me to the doctor when I was 12. Doctor Alexandria. She was an immigrant from Jamaica. Dr. Alexandria did what doctors do when they have kids in, she asked "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I was 12, so I said "I want to be a doctor and a lawyer when I grow up" My grandmother Said "Hush Boy! You ain't gonna be no doctor and a no lawyer!" Dr. Alexandria said, "No, You Hush! Don't you tell that boy what he can and can not do. I have a friend that is a doctor and a lawyer. If he wants to be a Doctor and a Lawyer, he can be a doctor and a lawyer!"
Now, I'm not a doctor and a lawyer, but I did graduate from Northwestern with a B.S. In communication studies. And I'm in Los Angeles pursuing my goals in the entertainment industry. I'm supporting Barack Obama not because he's a black man, because if Flavor Flav was running for office I wouldn't be here. I'm supporting him because he's a good man. An honest man. His unlikely story tells any kid no matter what race they are, whether their parents are immigrants, whether they were rich or poor, no matter what their starting circumstance, if they work hard and are good people they can be whatever they want to be. I'm supporting Barack so no other kid will have to hear that he can't be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever he or she wants to be.
At this point the election is just 6 days away. If you've been watching the coverage or reading the blogs on a daily basis then you know we have a great chance to make history. But this is not the time to let up. Monday and Tuesday are the closing days of the campaign and we're going to need all the help that we can get. This is your last time to help shape our country's history.
Ask yourself, do you want to want to tell your kids about the time you Voted for Change or do you want to tell your kids about that brief moment in history when you got off the couch and you made Change Happen! This is your chance to be the narrative instead of just reading the narrative.
If you're in Los Angeles, the you should sign up for a couple two hour phone banking shifts at the "Official Obama Biden Election Day Phone Bank." You can click here. If you're not in Los Angeles then just go to BarackObama.com put in your zipcode and find a phonebank near you!
I know many of you HATE making phone calls. Ask yourself this, would you rather do something you don't like for two hours or have a president you hate for another 4 years.
When you wake up on November 5th will you be able to say that you did all that you could.
You know sometimes, people. I don't just mean black people. Most people of lower socio economical means put caps on themselves. They limit what they feel is possible.
My grandmother took me to the doctor when I was 12. Doctor Alexandria. She was an immigrant from Jamaica. Dr. Alexandria did what doctors do when they have kids in, she asked "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I was 12, so I said "I want to be a doctor and a lawyer when I grow up" My grandmother Said "Hush Boy! You ain't gonna be no doctor and a no lawyer!" Dr. Alexandria said, "No, You Hush! Don't you tell that boy what he can and can not do. I have a friend that is a doctor and a lawyer. If he wants to be a Doctor and a Lawyer, he can be a doctor and a lawyer!"
Now, I'm not a doctor and a lawyer, but I did graduate from Northwestern with a B.S. In communication studies. And I'm in Los Angeles pursuing my goals in the entertainment industry. I'm supporting Barack Obama not because he's a black man, because if Flavor Flav was running for office I wouldn't be here. I'm supporting him because he's a good man. An honest man. His unlikely story tells any kid no matter what race they are, whether their parents are immigrants, whether they were rich or poor, no matter what their starting circumstance, if they work hard and are good people they can be whatever they want to be. I'm supporting Barack so no other kid will have to hear that he can't be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever he or she wants to be.
At this point the election is just 6 days away. If you've been watching the coverage or reading the blogs on a daily basis then you know we have a great chance to make history. But this is not the time to let up. Monday and Tuesday are the closing days of the campaign and we're going to need all the help that we can get. This is your last time to help shape our country's history.
Ask yourself, do you want to want to tell your kids about the time you Voted for Change or do you want to tell your kids about that brief moment in history when you got off the couch and you made Change Happen! This is your chance to be the narrative instead of just reading the narrative.
If you're in Los Angeles, the you should sign up for a couple two hour phone banking shifts at the "Official Obama Biden Election Day Phone Bank." You can click here. If you're not in Los Angeles then just go to BarackObama.com put in your zipcode and find a phonebank near you!
I know many of you HATE making phone calls. Ask yourself this, would you rather do something you don't like for two hours or have a president you hate for another 4 years.
When you wake up on November 5th will you be able to say that you did all that you could.
Advertisement
Thank you for posting this....
Strongly rec'd. God Bless!
October 29, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd, just for BE the narrative, rather than read the narrative.
Rock on, 'quis.
October 29, 2008 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ditto on "Be the narrative..." As well as for " I'm supporting Barack so no other kid will have to hear that he can't be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever he or she wants to be."
Thank you.
October 29, 2008 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
good reading. appreciate your thoughts q.
October 29, 2008 9:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The reason we're approaching a turning point in history next week is because today there are more and more people like you, people who stop the cycle of selfishness and cruelty. Thanks for your post.
October 29, 2008 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, you should be here.
Everyone else, too.
October 30, 2008 12:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
.
Props to you!
And welcome to L.A. ... I was born in the San Fernando Valley in 1946.
I've been manning phone banks for over 30 years.
Why? If others won't-- who will?
Thanks again for the fine comment.
~OGD~
*Cafe contributor since June 2005*
October 30, 2008 2:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hell Yes We Can!
October 30, 2008 4:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for sharing that with us. As painful as your story was to read, it was equally beautiful. Congratulations and long may you run!
Obama will restore a great promise to America and the world. Yes, it's true, anybody can be anything they want! There is HOPE for the future!
He will help create a future we actually WANT to live in.
October 30, 2008 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it's true, anybody can be anything they want!
_____
Within reasonable limits.
October 30, 2008 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yessir, leaving for my phone shift right now!
October 30, 2008 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
We're all in this together. You - just as much as me. We need each other.
Thanks for contributing to TPM and our country!
October 30, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I volunteered to make phone calls even though I didn't think I could do it. I felt good while doing it and afterwards too. I have to say I don't think it made a difference with anyone I talked to, except one woman who was going to vote against John Warner because when he was governor he made some decisions that impacted her job at UVA. I asked her if she had hit any pot-holes lately and reminded her that Jim Gilmore, in his zeal to be a tax-reducting hero, stopped taking care of our roads and highways, knowing that it wouldn't hit the fan until he was long-gone. She said, Yeah, you're right. I just needed to hear that.
For Obama, I either got the committed or the opposite. I am going to keep on doing it, but I wonder how much good it does at this point.
Anyway, thanks for the post; you have given me the encouragement to keep it up!
October 30, 2008 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like Flavor Flav. Though I'd rather vote for Chuck D.
October 30, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaav!!!
October 30, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
v!
October 30, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Going going gone! Polly wanna cracka?
October 30, 2008 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know sometimes, people. I don't just mean black people. Most people of lower socio economical means put caps on themselves. They limit what they feel is possible.
_____
That is about as absolutely true as can be. I'm currently dealing (again) with what some would call white trash -- a "lower socioeconomic class" white woman who grew up in an "integrated" ghetto. He source of information? FOX. Does she know she is racist? No.
Does she know how to communicate? No. Why? Because FOX has taught her that everything is only opinion, and that all that matters is "winning," without any concern -- or even cognizance -- for how one "wins". So everything is, even if she can't articulate it so, dog-eat-dog. Gratuitous personal attack is the norm, and constant: it is her notion of "empowerment": kicking others in the balls -- and getting away with it. Using, on one hand, her sex both to "get ahead," and as fallback position of weakness -- whichever is most advantageous to her at the moment.
Irrational and incoherent? Yes. Try to get a complete statement out before she jumps on the initial beginnings of it and runs it to off the wall and the conversation into the ditch.
I was born into and grew up in exactly the same sort of environment: a constant battle for kinds of "goods" of which most are useless and a waste of time and money. Constant battle over self-esteem which "cares not to come up any higher" (bobby d.) but rather tries to drag everyone else down to the same level.
So I know exactly what you mean -- about the abuses, the discouragements -- when I was 12 I told my mother I wanted to go to college. "We'll never be able to afford it," she said. I didn't know otherwise; but that hurt, and I never again revealed that dream to her -- it was stomped into the ground the first time. I got to college (two universities) anyway, in spite of her and the environment, first by reading my way out of that environment.
Exact same facts and discouragements. And I ain't black. Education is the proper issue; racism is a vicious distraction from that.
"The Southern politician preaches
to the poor white man:/
'You're better than him/
You been born with white skin,'
he explains./
While the poor white man remains/
On the caboose of the train/
But it ain't him to blame/
He's only a pawn in their game . . . ."
"Pawn in Their Game," bobby d.
Love your point, thequis.
October 30, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Change the pronoun to masculine and a few other small things and you have described John McCain, Karl, George, Dick and the rest of them. (Oh, except the part about them being socio-economically at the bottom of the ladder.
What's their excuse?
PS: I don't agree in any way with the tone of your post; wealth doesn't equal wisdom, and skin color and lack of money don't equal ignorance. Sometimes the things one posts show ignorance far better than small-minded assumptions.
October 30, 2008 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
The tone of my post? Or what you're reading into it? Actually, I don't give the least damn whether you "like" the "tone" of my post: the reality is as I describe it. And I've been an outspoken and active civil rights advocate for 50 years -- and that has never been a particular popular avocation.
I said nothing about wealth, let alone that it equals wisdom. As said, I READ my way out of the environment I describe -- I didn't do it with wealth. I subsequently did time at two universities -- and that wasn't done with wealth either.
Nor did I say that skin color and money equal ignorance. In fact, I expressly said exactly opposite. The woman I'm talking about is white, and grew up in an "integrated" GHETTO. She is funtionally illiterate, swallows FOX's swill unquestioningly, and reduces everything (as does FOX) to "opinion" so everyone else is brought down to her level.
(I also have a sister who reduces everything to "opinion" so she can falsely feel "equal" to those who actually "know stuff" [her words]).
She also quotes to me a black woman -- that's as SHE identifies whoever the person -- "in her 60s" (the false assumption being that AGE is wisdom) saying that, "They're all alike!" -- meaning politicians. I don't know about where you come from, but where I come from that is an all-purpose excuse not only for not voting but also for not bothering to know what is going on politically. It is, in short, an all-purpose excuse of the intellectually lazy.
It is also, as I noted, self-defeating: that is the essential means by which she "caps" -- limits -- herself. She knows it all, therefore has nothing to learn, and every relationship is for her dog-eat-dog; it's all about "winning," and there is no reflection on let alone concern with ends and means.
Tell the negative facts about Palin -- the "rape kit" policy as example -- or about McSame and she will attack the messenger because she DOESN'T WANT TO KNOW anything contrary to her preference for hating Democrats. It's the same mindless righteousness-based raging one sees at Palin rallies.
Reread what I wrote for what it says, rather than for that you want it to say.
October 30, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glad you made it Dog, glad you made it!
October 30, 2008 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink